The Warden

Brian Cashman and the New York Yankees are pushing the right buttons

Thu, 16 May 2013 12:46:33 -0400

Brian Cashman and the New York Yankees are pushing the right buttons:

No one wants to give it to the Yankees because of the payroll — the perception that any Tom, Dick or Cashman could run baseball ops backed by Steinbrenner wallets. In reality, the Yankees have a well-run baseball operation.

The shocking banality of infanticide

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:33:08 -0400

The shocking banality of infanticide:

One possible answer is that Gosnell might be particularly depraved. On his own, he came up with the idea that murdering a fetus near the moment of birth was morally permissible, at least if the mother asked him to do it. That’s comforting. It lets us console ourselves with the thought that such brutality is a fluke and not likely to be repeated.

But that’s probably not the right answer. While murder rates for almost every group in society have plummeted in recent decades, there’s one group where murder rates have doubled, according to CDC and National Center for Health Statistics data — babies less than a year old.

[…]

It could be that the teaching power of abortion law is eroding more than the moral sense of doctors. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, infant homicide is shockingly common. Its most recent 2002 report suggests that the day a person is born is, by far, the most likely day for them to be killed.

[…]

A far better choice exists. As a society, we could agree that there really is little difference between killing a being inside and outside the womb. We should admit that our system of abortion law is dehumanizing. The better course is to protect even small voiceless human beings from more powerful people who would rather see them dead, whether that killing happens inside or outside the womb.

Dictionary of Numbers

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:37:25 -0400

Dictionary of Numbers:

I don’t like large numbers without context. Phrases like “they called for a $21 billion budget cut” or “the probe will travel 60 billion miles” or “a 150,000-ton ship ran aground” don’t mean very much to me on their own. Is that a large ship? Does 60 billion miles take you outside the Solar System? How much is $21 billion compared to the overall budget? (That last question is why I made my money chart.)

A friend of mine, Glen Chiacchieri, has created a Chrome extension to help solve this problem: Dictionary of Numbers. It searches the text in your browser for quantities it understands and inserts contextual statements in brackets. It might turn the phrase “315 million people” into “315 million people [≈ the population of the United States]“.

Yankees School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:41:58 -0400

Yankees School of Witchcraft and Wizardry:

Michael is convinced that it is time that I just admit that I am wrong, and he is right about the New York Yankees being a magical species, not unlike house elves. He is fairly enraged that I will not just admit defeat. I picked the Yankees to collapse under their own weight this year. He thinks I’m a flat-earther who will not face the obvious truth — that the Yankees will always, continuously, endlessly, constantly, incessantly and unceasingly win forever and ever, amen. He thinks it is way past time for me to admit it doesn’t really matter who is actually ON the Yankees — doesn’t matter if every single baseball player on earth gets hurt and they are forced to have Shecky Greene hit second and play centerfield. In this case, Mike is convinced that Shecky Greene would hit .289 with 24 homers and win a Gold Glove.

It’s been a full year since Somali pirates hijacked a boat

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:23:23 -0400

It’s been a full year since Somali pirates hijacked a boat:

Over the last 12 months, piracy off the Horn of Africa has nearly disappeared. In the first 16 weeks of 2013, there have been no vessel hijackings reported (pdf) to the US Office of Naval Intelligence. And according to the UN, the last vessel to be commandeered by militants was the Greek tanker MV Smyrni on May 10, 2012, almost a year ago.

(via Taegan Goddard)

Subway more unhealthy than McDonald's?

Mon, 13 May 2013 16:28:08 -0400

Subway more unhealthy than McDonald's?:

In the end, it’s not where you eat but what you choose off the menu that matters — and eating at Subway is just as likely to make you fat as pulling up to the drive-thru at McDonald’s, researchers concluded.

(via Dave Pell)

The Cleveland victims and our hunger for obscene details

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:33:07 -0400

The Cleveland victims and our hunger for obscene details:

I quote these passages not to suggest in any literal way that Ariel Casto’s evil is ingested by anyone who reads about his story, but to point out the idea that for all the scrupulous reporting what happened to the three women in Cleveland we are left with an excess of obscenity and cruelty that cannot be neatly stowed away inside a news story. I can’t help asking, for whom, and for what purpose, were these details publicized? Why do I need to know what I now know?

(via Dave Pell)

A clever way to reduce pirating

Fri, 03 May 2013 10:55:54 -0400

A clever way to reduce pirating:

“Is there some way to avoid [piracy]? I mean can I research DRM or something?” lamented one poster. “Why are there so many people that pirate? It ruins me! … Not fair,” wrote another.

A few reminders on Miranda rights

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:56:14 -0400

A few reminders on Miranda rights:

Law enforcement has successfully captured Dzhokar Tsarnaev, and DOJ has announced that Tsarnaev is being interrogated without first being read his Miranda rights because the DOJ thinks that the public safety exception to Miranda applies. Back in 2010, I blogged a lot about Miranda in this setting. Here are a few reminders about the law here:

Scientists make 'laboratory-grown' kidney

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:18:56 -0400

Scientists make 'laboratory-grown' kidney:

A kidney “grown” in the laboratory has been transplanted into animals where it started to produce urine, US scientists say.

Similar techniques to make simple body parts have already been used in patients, but the kidney is one of the most complicated organs made so far.

(via Dashiell Bennett)

“When Will Politicians Find Courage to Ban Automatic Weapons?”

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 10:56:00 -0400

“When Will Politicians Find Courage to Ban Automatic Weapons?”:

The answer to this question is pretty much 1986 (whether that’s a matter of “courage” or not), when automatic weapons — i.e., machineguns — were largely banned. There is an exception for pre-1986 automatic weapons, of which there are relatively few, since they have been heavily taxed since the 1930s. As a result, automatic weapons are very expensive, hard to get legally, and banned outright in many jurisdictions. Those grandfathered weapons are almost never used in violent crime.

Why bitcoin fails: Illiquidity

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 11:51:15 -0400

Why bitcoin fails: Illiquidity:

But bitcoins are not so liquid. Mostly, to buy things, I need to trade them for dollars or another currency. And that is the fatal weakness of bitcoins: at some point, to compete with dollars, it needs to enter the real economy. And if bitcoins become a good way to avoid government surveillance of your financial transactions, then governments will find a way to choke off those entry points so that bitcoins become very illiquid indeed. You cannot have a valuable currency that is good only for the purchase of child pornography and other highly illegal, entirely digital goods.

The psychology of naming a hurricane

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 10:55:57 -0400

The psychology of naming a hurricane:

Like many decisions that seem arbitrary at first, hurricane naming has unexpected practical consequences. In the mid-1980s, Belgian psychologist Jozef Nuttin showed that people like their initials more than they like other letters in the alphabet. For example, in one study Nuttin found that Europeans who spoke 12 different languages were 50% more likely to identify their own name letters among their top six favorite letters of the alphabet.

In a more recent twist on Nuttin’s basic result, psychologist Jesse Chandler and his colleagues found that people donate significantly more money to hurricanes that share their initials. So Roberts, Ralphs and Roses donated on average 260% more to the Hurricane Rita relief fund than did people without R initials. Also in 2005, people with K initials donated 150% more to the Katrina relief fund, and in 2004 people with I initials donated 100% more to the Ivan relief fund.

FGCU and Atlas Shrugged

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:51:16 -0400

FGCU and Atlas Shrugged:

If you’re wondering how Florida Gulf Coast University became the first 15th seed in the history of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament to advance to the Sweet 16, look no further than the ur-text of the school’s economics department: “Atlas Shrugged.”

Narratively does long-form journalism right

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:51:09 -0400

Narratively does long-form journalism right:

Inspired to create a new platform that would tell the real and bold narratives of New Yorkers, Rosenberg and co-founder Brendan Spiegel launched a Kickstarter campaign, eventually raising almost $54,000

Facebook likes can reveal private personality traits, according to study

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:51:12 -0400

Facebook likes can reveal private personality traits, according to study:

It’s no secret that Facebook is a goldmine for advertisers seeking to target specific demographics — but it may surprise you to discover just how much of your personality is revealed by simple activities there. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Microsoft Research have been quietly (and innocuously) collecting data on Facebook user likes and personality traits using applications like “MyPersonality” on Facebook, and now they’re showing how the data can be used. Simply by tracking what things you’ve liked on Facebook, the researchers say they’re able to determine things like your sex, ethnicity, political leanings, and religion with accuracies over 80 percent.

What Bush did right

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:56:07 -0400

What Bush did right:

It’s impossible to tell exactly how many lives the program has saved, though Secretary of State John Kerry recently claimed that 5 million people are alive today because of it. That’s probably as good an estimate as any.

The last all-nighter

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 10:56:10 -0500

The last all-nighter:

It did not take long for my daily late nights at the office to segue into a voracious need for letting loose off the clock. I quickly became unable to socialize without popping the medication that now provided just enough extra energy required to maintain my outgoing side. Even on nights when I planned to take it easy, the meds had no off switch, so I’d find myself leaving the office full of energy that I didn’t know how to quell. The mix of whiskey rocks and a pocket of pills was a potent one. I was now getting high seven nights a week, every night a delicate balancing act.

Coming out as a friend of Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:14:21 -0500

Coming out as a friend of Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A:

Throughout the conversations Dan expressed a sincere interest in my life, wanting to get to know me on a personal level. He wanted to know about where I grew up, my faith, my family, even my husband, Tommy. In return, I learned about his wife and kids and gained an appreciation for his devout belief in Jesus Christ and his commitment to being “a follower of Christ” more than a “Christian.” Dan expressed regret and genuine sadness when he heard of people being treated unkindly in the name of Chick-fil-a — but he offered no apologies for his genuine beliefs about marriage.

A real world series: Inside the world championship of blind baseball

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 16:28:27 -0500

A real world series: Inside the world championship of blind baseball:

In the ’60s, when baseball really was a pastime – unlike now, when it’s past its time – lots of blind guys wanted to play the game. So in 1964, Charles Fairbanks, an engineer with Mountain Bell Telephone invented a baseball that beeped, and bases that emitted a sound, and after a decade of tooling the mechanisms, and hashing out the rules, the first World Series took place in St. Paul in 1976.